Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (
More info?)
On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 15:26:20 +0000, Robert Redelmeier wrote:
> A Jones <ajones@nospam.me.noway> wrote:
>> One of the reasons OS/2 faltered is that IBM was releasing versions
>> that needed 16MB of RAM at a time when 2 or 4 MB was the norm.
>
> News to me. I thought the main reason OS/2 faltered was
> Billy got in a huff and left with the UI with him. He
> split the project, and took the market.
The story of OS/2 is a long one. IBM and MS were working on it
together, but MS was responsible for "advanced kernel development,"
so they were doing all the kernel stuff. IBM was doing the GUI.
What happened is that MS continued working on the DOS/Windows line
more or less behind IBM's back. Then, when Windows 3.1 hit the scene,
it was an unexpected smashing commercial success. The technology
was terrible, much worse than OS/2. The success was because it could run
in, let's say, 4 MB RAM, and it could run a lot of DOS software without
too much fuss. Bill didn't get in a huff, he just realized he was
holding all the cards. He decided to take the Windows 3.1 market, which
was in his hands, and shepherd it to Windows 95 and Windows NT, and dump
IBM.
OS/2 had a very nice GUI. It was a little drab in appearance, but
functionally it was powerful and slick. I would say the OS/2
GUI was more advanced 10 or 12 years ago than Gnome is today,
and OS/2 could run happily in 16 MB RAM rather than 512 or whatever
you think Gnome needs.
>> Windows 3.1 was pretty happy with 2 or 4 MB or RAM,
>
> Maybe 4 without many apps open. Not 2.
>
>> and Windows 95 could get by with 8MB.
>
> Very badly. It was designed for 16, and ran much better in 32+.
>
>> As far as the current situation goes, I think it's pretty
>> clear that current Linux distributions are by far the
>> most inefficient and resource hungry systems ever created.
>> The system I'm on now (Linux Fedora Core 2) just doesn't run
>> well with less than 512 MB of RAM, and it needs at least 768
>> if I want to avoid excessive swapping when I have a lot of
>> Firefox tabs and other stuff going at once. That's a far
>> cry from the 8 or 16 MB Win 95 used to need, and it's 3 or
>> 4 times what my Win2000 and Win XP systems need.
>
> I don't know what your problem is. I run Slackware fine on
> an old 486sx laptop with 8 MB (no GUI). My main machine
> has an excessive 512 MB, I run it swapless and I still get:
>
> $ free
> total used free shared buffers cached
> Mem: 515376 480772 34604 0 28904 199236
> -/+ buffers/cache: 252632 262744
> Swap: 0 0 0
>
> with Mozilla, Citrix & bash running under KDE. It ran fine
> swapless with 256 MB, and I'd expect it to run OK at 128 or
> maybe 64 MB with swap.
I generally have Gnome, Firefox, Thunderbird (or Evolution), XEmacs,
some terminals, and maybe a newsreader open. With 512MB, I could squeak
by most of the time, but too many Firefox tabs, or opening a pdf viewer,
or something, and bang, I was swapping like crazy. In my
experience, Windows 2000 and XP take a lot less memory for a similar
setup. In fact, I can get by with Windows 2000 running on 128 MB of
RAM. There's no way on earth I could ever get a RH system with Gnome
to run decently in that, or even 168 MB RAM -- not even close. Nor
will I ever waste the hours and hours of my life fiddling around trying
to get it to. If you've had better success, good. Enjoy.